A statesman says goodbye to a nation that's lost its way

On Nov. 14, 2012, Ron Paul gave his farewell speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. His words were both a summation of the principles our nation was founded on, and an indictment of a political class and a complacent society that has cast those principles aside. Following are some excerpts from the transcript of his speech, with a look at some recent political events to put the good doctor's words in current and timely context.

(Ron's words in bold, to differentiate from other quotes ... and putting them in red text seemed to be a bit much.)

In many ways, according to conventional wisdom, my off-and-on career in Congress, from 1976 to 2012, accomplished very little. No named legislation, no named federal buildings or highways — thank goodness. In spite of my efforts, the government has grown exponentially, taxes remain excessive, and the prolific increase of incomprehensible regulations continues. Wars are constant and pursued without Congressional declaration, deficits rise to the sky, poverty is rampant, and dependency on the federal government is now worse than any time in our history.

All this with minimal concerns for the deficits and unfunded liabilities that common sense tells us cannot go on much longer.  A grand, but never mentioned, bipartisan agreement allows for the well-kept secret that keeps the spending going. One side doesn’t give up one penny on military spending, the other side doesn’t give up one penny on welfare spending, while both sides support the bailouts and subsidies for the banking and corporate elite. And the spending continues as the economy weakens and the downward spiral continues. As the government continues fiddling around, our liberties and our wealth burn in the flames of a foreign policy that makes us less safe.

The major stumbling block to real change in Washington is the total resistance to admitting that the country is broke. This has made compromising, just to agree to increase spending, inevitable since neither side has any intention of cutting spending.

The country and the Congress will remain divisive since there’s no “loot left to divvy up.”

Without this recognition the spenders in Washington will continue the march toward a fiscal cliff much bigger than the one anticipated this coming January.

One side won't budge on military spending, while the other won't budge on entitlements. So true. Mitt Romney said he'd increase military spending, even though our military spending already dwarfs what anyone else in the world spends. And neither party will touch entitlements. Defense and entitlements are the two biggest expenditures in the federal budget -- yet they're both off limits.

Everyone claims support for freedom.  But too often it's for ones own freedom and not for others.  Too many believe that there must be limits on freedom. They argue that freedom must be directed and managed to achieve fairness and equality thus making it acceptable to curtail, through force, certain liberties.

The political left, self-appointed defenders of tolerance, have shown their true colors in this regard several times in 2012. First we had the Susan G. Komen Foundation's decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood, the world's largest provider of abortion services. From the outrage and hysteria, you'd have thought women would suddenly be dying on the streets, yet Komen only ever granted PP $650,000 out of a billion-dollar budget and provided funding to only 19 PP clinics for breast-cancer screening. The intolerance was so strident that Komen eventually caved in. 

Then there was the Chick-fil-A dust-up. The restaurant chain's president said he supported what he believed to be the biblical definition of marriage -- in other words, he personally opposed gay marriage. Never mind that there has never been any evidence that the chain has discriminated against gay employees or customers. The mere fact that the company's founder personally espoused a politically unpopular belief was enough to bring down the Left's wrath. The Democratic mayors of Boston and Chicago both said Chick-fil-A wasn't welcome in their cities, with Emanuel proclaiming that "Chick-fil-A's values are not Chicago's values." (One wonders if he expected the Christian churches in Chicago to pack up and move out.)

Of course, the guy Emanuel used to work for -- Barack Obama -- also opposed gay marriage until he "evolved" on his position just in time for the re-election campaign season to start, but let's just sweep that inconvenient fact under the rug. The bigger issue here is a peek into the minds of those who claim to be so tolerant and open-minded. If Emanuel and Menino think they can tell companies to stay out of their cities based on company owners' personal political views, then they're more intolerant than they even imagine the company owners to be. It's no great feat to be tolerant only of those whose views you agree with. And you can just imagine the outcry if a conservative mayor threatened to ban a left-leaning business owner from doing business in his or her city.

And most recently, we have the reaction to the people petitioning the White House for their states' secession from the union following Obama's re-election. Naturally, the petitions will never be taken seriously, nor should they -- after all, if you want to secede from what you perceive to be your oppressor, you don't ask your oppressor for permission. You take action and do it yourself. You think the confederate states ever intended to ask Lincoln for permission to leave the union? The Declaration of Independence itself is a proclamation of secession from the British Empire -- how far do you think the American Revolution would have gotten if we'd gone to King George and asked nicely for our freedom instead?

In any event, the Left's response to all this silliness has been to also petition the White House -- to strip would-be secessionists of their citizenship and deport them.

Well, gee, so much for freedom of expression. We can't tolerate anyone who doesn't swear total fealty to Lord Obama. Meet the 21st century's Loyalists. 

Funny how quickly 2004 has been forgotten. Back then, after John Kerry lost to George W. Bush, Democrats were ready to join the states Kerry won to our neighbors to the north and create "the United States of Canada," leaving the Bush states to become "Jesusland."

But in fairness, the intolerance of free expression isn't limited to the Left. Joan the Silencer has become the latest Internet meme among libertarians and Paulestinians.

That image comes from the Republican Convention, as Joan Clendenin, a Romney delegate from California, attempts to silence Jeremy Blosser, an alternate Ron Paul delegate from Texas, as he called for a point of order. (As Blosser explains, the mic wasn't on.) This scene followed the convention ruling to unseat part of Maine's pro-Paul delegation and replace them with Romney loyalists.

And that wasn't the only dirty trick in the Romney playbook -- there were reports that entire delegations friendly to Paul were driven around aimlessly on buses so they couldn't get to the convention center to vote on changes from the convention's rules committee. That same committee was responsible for changing the rules to require a minimum of eight states to enter a candidate's name for nomination, after it was clear that Paul had the support of at least five states, which was the number needed for nomination under the then-existing rule. To add insult to injury, another new rule gave the party the power to select state delegates in the future, virtually rendering state primaries and caucuses meaningless but shielding the party from having to deal with a grassroots candidate ever again. (And this was after the Romney camp and the GOP machine in several states did everything in their power, up to and including physical force, to disenfranchise Paul supporters.)

In the end, Paul's name was never put into nomination, and he was never given a chance to speak at the convention. Even if there had been opposition to all these shenanigans from the convention floor -- and there was -- the response from the podium itself had already been scripted on the Teleprompter:

Joan the Silencer's infamous image has been injected into all manner of visuals, with her handful of papers shushing everyone from Jesus to Braveheart to the Founding Fathers. This one speaks for itself:

Well, it tries to speak for itself, anyway.

More from Dr. Paul:

• Tragically our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.

• The drone warfare we are pursuing worldwide is destined to end badly for us as the hatred builds for innocent lives lost and the international laws flaunted. Once we are financially weakened and militarily challenged, there will be a lot resentment thrown our way.

• It’s now the law of the land that the military can arrest American citizens, hold them indefinitely, without charges or a trial.[ ... ]
  
• Why is there so little concern for the Executive Order that gives the President authority to establish a "kill list," including American citizens, of those targeted for assassination?

When you tell people about NDAA, the kill list, and the drone war, many of them are absolutely clueless regarding all of it. But as one group found out, voters will rationalize both things away when you tell them that it's their guy, not the other guy, who's carrying out those policies.

When it's Romney proposing these actions, it's unconscionable. But when it's Obama, well, he must have a good reason, and he's a really good guy otherwise.

This is why there are no antiwar protestors, even as we continue to drone-bomb weddings, funerals, rescuers, women, and children. (Obama launched another drone attack, this one in Yemen, literally hours after being re-elected.) The Left adheres to a double standard for its messiah. As Bruce Springsteen once said, "Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed." (Of course, the Boss is in the bag for Obama, so take his warning with a grain of salt.)

In a way, you can hardly blame the American people for being oblivious to what the current administration is up to. One astute commenter on Huffington Post took a couple of screen shots of CNN and Al-Jazeera and proved the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words:

On one, actual news. On the other, nothing but fluff. Bread and circuses for everyone.

Fortunately, there are some on the Left with enough intellectual honesty to oppose Obama and his horrible policies that essentially make him an extension of George W. Bush's presidency. Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic had this to say in explaining why he refused to vote for Obama:

1. Obama terrorizes innocent Pakistanis on an almost daily basis. The drone war he is waging in North Waziristan isn't "precise" or "surgical" as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children. And for thousands of more innocents who live in the targeted communities, the drone war makes their lives into a nightmare worthy of dystopian novels. People are always afraid. Women cower in their homes. Children are kept out of school. The stress they endure gives them psychiatric disorders. Men are driven crazy by an inability to sleep as drones buzz overhead 24 hours a day, a deadly strike possible at any moment. At worst, this policy creates more terrorists than it kills; at best, America is ruining the lives of thousands of innocent people and killing hundreds of innocents for a small increase in safety from terrorists. It is a cowardly, immoral, and illegal policy, deliberately cloaked in opportunistic secrecy. And Democrats who believe that it is the most moral of all responsible policy alternatives are as misinformed and blinded by partisanship as any conservative ideologue. 
2. Obama established one of the most reckless precedents imaginable: that any president can secretly order and oversee the extrajudicial killing of American citizens. Obama's kill list transgresses against the Constitution as egregiously as anything George W. Bush ever did. It is as radical an invocation of executive power as anything Dick Cheney championed. The fact that the Democrats rebelled against those men before enthusiastically supporting Obama is hackery every bit as blatant and shameful as anything any talk radio host has done.  
3. Contrary to his own previously stated understanding of what the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution demand, President Obama committed U.S. forces to war in Libya without Congressional approval, despite the lack of anything like an imminent threat to national security. 

In different ways, each of these transgressions run contrary to candidate Obama's 2008 campaign. (To cite just one more example among many, Obama has done more than any modern executive to wage war on whistleblowers. In fact, under Obama, Bush-era lawbreakers, including literal torturers, have been subject to fewer and less draconian attempts at punishment them than some of the people who conscientiously came forward to report on their misdeeds.) Obama ran in the proud American tradition of reformers taking office when wartime excesses threatened to permanently change the nature of the country. But instead of ending those excesses, protecting civil liberties, rolling back executive power, and reasserting core American values, Obama acted contrary to his mandate. The particulars of his actions are disqualifying in themselves. But taken together, they put us on a course where policies Democrats once viewed as radical post-9/11 excesses are made permanent parts of American life.

He continues:

What about the assertion that Romney will be even worse than Obama has been on these issues? It is quite possible, though not nearly as inevitable as Democrats seem to think. It isn't as though they accurately predicted the abysmal behavior of Obama during his first term, after all. And how do you get worse than having set a precedent for the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens? 

[ ... ]

Sometimes a policy is so reckless or immoral that supporting its backer as "the lesser of two evils" is unacceptable. If enough people start refusing to support any candidate who needlessly terrorizes innocents, perpetrates radical assaults on civil liberties, goes to war without Congress, or persecutes whistleblowers, among other misdeeds, post-9/11 excesses will be reined in.

If not?

So long as voters let the bipartisan consensus on these questions stand, we keep going farther down this road, America having been successfully provoked by Osama bin Laden into abandoning our values.

We tortured.

We started spying without warrants on our own citizens.

We detain indefinitely without trial or public presentation of evidence.

We continue drone strikes knowing they'll kill innocents, and without knowing that they'll make us safer.

Is anyone looking beyond 2012?

The future I hope for, where these actions are deal-breakers in at least one party (I don't care which), requires some beginning, some small number of voters to say, "These things I cannot support."  

[ ... ]

I can respect counterarguments, especially when advanced by utilitarians who have no deal-breakers of their own. But if you're a Democrat who has affirmed that you'd never vote for an opponent of gay equality, or a torturer, or someone caught using racial slurs, how can you vote for the guy who orders drone strikes that kill hundreds of innocents and terrorizes thousands more -- and who constantly hides the ugliest realities of his policy (while bragging about the terrorists it kills) so that Americans won't even have all the information sufficient to debate the matter for themselves?

How can you vilify Romney as a heartless plutocrat unfit for the presidency, and then enthusiastically recommend a guy who held Bradley Manning in solitary and killed a 16-year-old American kid? If you're a utilitarian who plans to vote for Obama, better to mournfully acknowledge that you regard him as the lesser of two evils, with all that phrase denotes.

But I don't see many Obama supporters feeling as reluctant as the circumstances warrant. 

The whole liberal conceit that Obama is a good, enlightened man, while his opponent is a malign, hard-hearted cretin, depends on constructing a reality where the lives of non-Americans -- along with the lives of some American Muslims and whistleblowers -- just aren't valued. Alternatively, the less savory parts of Obama's tenure can just be repeatedly disappeared from the narrative of his first term, as so many left-leaning journalists, uncomfortable confronting the depths of the man's transgressions, have done over and over again.   

Keen on Obama's civil-libertarian message and reassertion of basic American values, I supported him in 2008. Today I would feel ashamed to associate myself with his first term or the likely course of his second.

As for that dead 16-year-old American kid, killed by Obama's war machine with not even a shred of due process, Obama's advisor offers the following: 

"I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children."

It's not Obama's fault that Obama targeted the kid. The kid should have had a better dad.

Wow. Just wow. Kudos to Conor Friedersdorf for holding Obama's feet to the fire. We need more people of integrity like him to speak up and demand that we won't allow this to stand.

Back to Ron Paul:

Why does changing the party in power never change policy? Could it be that the views of both parties are essentially the same?

I heard lots of people stating the cases for their chosen candidate this election cycle, and what I heard was less than inspiring. Over and over again, people didn't defend their own candidate as much as they talked about how horrible things would be if the other guy got elected (or re-elected). Not only is that a sad commentary on American politics, but it's also an indication of how most voters get caught up in the ridiculous narratives, perpetuated by the major parties and their media lackeys, that suggest such a stark, vast difference between Democrats and Republicans, based mostly on a few hot-button social issues.

In reality, the parties sound more and more alike with each passing election, and it's clear that they both serve the same corporate masters.

Not surprisingly, it takes a foreign observer to point this out. The Political Compass, a U.K. political-quiz site, offered a brilliant summation of the 2012 presidential election. I share it here in its entirety -- complete with critiques of all the candidates, including Dr. Paul:

This is a US election that defies logic and brings the nation closer towards a one-party state masquerading as a two-party state.

The Democratic incumbent has surrounded himself with conservative advisors and key figures — many from previous administrations, and an unprecedented number from the Trilateral Commission. He also appointed a former Monsanto executive as Senior Advisor to the FDA. He has extended Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, presided over a spiralling rich-poor gap and sacrificed further American jobs with recent free trade deals. Trade union rights have also eroded under his watch. He has expanded Bush defence spending, droned civilians, failed to close Guantanamo, supported the NDAA which effectively legalises martial law, allowed drilling and adopted a soft-touch position towards the banks that is to the right of European Conservative leaders. Taking office during the financial meltdown, Obama appointed its principle architects to top economic positions. We list these because many of Obama's detractors absurdly portray him as either a radical liberal or a socialist, while his apologists, equally absurdly, continue to view him as a well-intentioned progressive, tragically thwarted by overwhelming pressures. 2008's yes-we-can chanters, dazzled by pigment rather than policy detail, forgot to ask can what? Between 1998 and the last election, Obama amassed $37.6million from the financial services industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. While 2008 presidential candidate Obama appeared to champion universal health care, his first choice for Secretary of Health was a man who had spent years lobbying on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry against that very concept. Hey! You don't promise a successful pub, and then appoint the Salvation Army to run it. This time around, the honey-tongued President makes populist references to economic justice, while simultaneously appointing as his new Chief of Staff a former Citigroup executive concerned with hedge funds that bet on the housing market to collapse. Obama poses something of a challenge to The Political Compass, because he's a man of so few fixed principles.

As outrageous as it may appear, civil libertarians and human rights supporters would have actually fared better under a Republican administration. Had a Bush or McCain presidency permitted extrajudicial executions virtually anywhere in the world ( www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/047/2012/en ), expanded drone strikes and introduced the NDAA, the Democratic Party would have howled from the rooftops. Senator Obama the Constitutional lawyer would have been one of the most vocal objectors. Under a Democratic administration however, these far-reaching developments have received scant opposition and a disgraceful absence of mainstream media coverage.

Democratic and, especially, some Republican candidates, will benefit massively from new legislation that permits them to receive unlimited and unaccountable funding. This means a significant shift of political power to the very moneyed interests that earlier elections tried to contain. Super PACs will inevitably reshape the system and undermine democracy. It would be naïve to suppose that a President Gingrich would feel no obligations towards his generous backer, Sheldon Adelson, one of the country's most influential men. Or a President Santorum towards billionaire mutual fund tycoon, Foster Freiss. (Santorum emerged as the most authoritarian candidate, not the least for his extreme stand against abortion and condom sales.) Or a President Paul, whose largest single donor, billionaire Peter Thiel, founded a controversial defence company contracting to the CIA and the FBI. Last year it was caught operating an illegal spy ring targeting opponents of the US Chamber of Commerce. In our opinion the successful GOP contender, Romney, despite his consistent contempt for the impoverished, was correctly described as the weather vane candidate. He shares another similarity with Obama. His corporate-friendly health care plan for Massachusetts was strikingly similar to the President's "compromise" package. The emergence of the Tea Party enables the 2012 GOP ticket of unprecedented economic extremity to present itself as middle-of-the road — between an ultra right movement with "some good ideas that might go a bit too far" and, on the other side, a dangerous "socialist" president.

The smaller non-Tea parties provide the only substantial electoral diversity — virtually unreported — in their Sisyphean struggle against the two mountainous conservative machines. Identity issues like gay marriage disguise the absence of fundamental differences and any real contrast of vision. Since FDR, the mainstream American "Left" has been much more concerned with the social rather than the economic scale. Identity politics; issues like peace, immigration, gay and women's rights, prayers in school have assumed far greater importance than matters like pensions and minimum wages that preoccupy their counterparts in other democracies. Hence the appeal of Ron Paul to many liberals, despite his far-right economics. Paul, unlike Romney, would have delivered a significant crossover vote from Democrats.

If Romney loses the election, it would hardly be devastating for mainstream Republicans. During a second term of Obama, they would no doubt continue to frame the debates.

The tiny space between Obama and Romney on the Political Compass grid only serves to drive the point home:

That little gap between them is what so many American voters get hysterical over. The guys are two sides of the same coin, and most people either can't see it or are so invested in their particular political ideology that they choose not to.

For reference, here's where Ron Paul stands in comparison with the other candidates. (I superimposed his spot on a graph from the 2008 primary candidates.)

More from Ron:

Why are sick people who use medical marijuana put in prison?

And why is one dispenser of medical marijuana, a man who followed his state's laws, now facing 80  years in prison -- after the Obama administration said it wouldn't crack down on medical marijuana users?

 
And what will happen now that Colorado and Washington have legalized recreational marijuana use? Will Obama roll in the tanks and begin mass arrests? Don't be surprised to see the feds crack down hard if push comes to shove in these two states.

Dr. Paul:

Sacrificing a little liberty for imaginary safety always ends badly.

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben Franklin

Some argue it’s only a matter of “fairness” that those in need are cared for. There are two problems with this. First, the principle is used to provide a greater amount of benefits to the rich than the poor. Second, no one seems to be concerned about whether or not it’s fair to those who end up paying for the benefits. The costs are usually placed on the backs of the middle class and are hidden from the public eye. Too many people believe government handouts are free, like printing money out of thin air, and there is no cost. That deception is coming to an end. The bills are coming due and that’s what the economic slowdown is all about.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship." -- Attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler

The Internet will provide the alternative to the government/media complex that controls the news and most political propaganda. This is why it's essential that the Internet remains free of government regulation.

The truth is out there. It's just a matter of getting people to turn off their TVs, stop being spoon-fed, and do their own research.

What a wonderful world it would be if everyone accepted the simple moral premise of rejecting all acts of aggression.

So true.

There's every reason to believe that a renewed effort with the use of the Internet that we can instead advance the cause of liberty by spreading an uncensored message that will serve to rein in government authority and challenge the obsession with war and welfare.

What I'm talking about is a system of government guided by the moral principles of peace and tolerance.

[ ... ]

A moral people must reject all violence in an effort to mold people’s beliefs or habits.

A society that boos or ridicules the Golden Rule is not a moral society. All great religions endorse the Golden Rule. The same moral standards that individuals are required to follow should apply to all government officials. They cannot be exempt.

In short, who would Jesus bomb?

One wonders whom Dr. Paul had in mind with the following statement:

The immoral use of force is the source of man's political problems. Sadly, many religious groups, secular organizations, and psychopathic authoritarians endorse government initiated force to change the world.  Even when the desired goals are well-intentioned — or especially when well-intentioned — the results are dismal. The good results sought never materialize. The new problems created require even more government force as a solution. The net result is institutionalizing government initiated violence and morally justifying it on humanitarian grounds. This is the same fundamental reason our government  uses force  for invading other countries at will, central economic planning at home, and the regulation of personal liberty and habits of our citizens.

Did Ron Paul just call out his fellow members of Congress as a band of "psychopathic authoritarians"? If so, he was spot-on with his assessment.

And finally:

The No. 1 responsibility for each of us is to change ourselves with hope that others will follow. This is of greater importance than working on changing the government; that is secondary to promoting a virtuous society. If we can achieve this, then the government will change.

It doesn't mean that political action or holding office has no value. At times it does nudge policy in the right direction. But what is true is that when seeking office is done for personal aggrandizement, money or power, it becomes useless if not harmful. When political action is taken for the right reasons it’s easy to understand why compromise should be avoided. It also becomes clear why progress is best achieved by working with coalitions, which bring people together, without anyone sacrificing his principles.

Political action, to be truly beneficial, must be directed toward changing the hearts and minds of the people, recognizing that it's the virtue and morality of the people that allow liberty to flourish.
The Constitution or more laws per se, have no value if the people's attitudes aren't changed. 

To achieve liberty and peace, two powerful human emotions have to be overcome. Number one is envy, which leads to hate and class warfare. Number two is intolerance, which leads to bigoted and judgmental policies. These emotions must be replaced with a much better understanding of love, compassion, tolerance and free market economics. Freedom, when understood, brings people together. When tried, freedom is popular.

The problem we have faced over the years has been that economic interventionists are swayed by envy, whereas social interventionists are swayed by intolerance of habits and lifestyles. The misunderstanding that tolerance is an endorsement of certain activities, motivates many to legislate moral standards which should only be set by individuals making their own choices. Both sides use force to deal with these misplaced emotions. Both are authoritarians. Neither endorses voluntarism. 

Both views ought to be rejected.

I have come to one firm conviction after these many years of trying to figure out "the plain truth of things." The best chance for achieving peace and prosperity, for the maximum number of people world-wide, is to pursue the cause of liberty.

If you find this to be a worthwhile message, spread it throughout the land.

In this election, Gary Johnson received more than a million votes, the largest ever for a Libertarian candidate. We may never know how many people wrote in Ron Paul as their candidate. But we do know that at least 1% of the electorate voted for liberty in this election cycle.

That's small, but it's encouraging. One can only hope that spreading this inspiring speech from Ron Paul will ignite the fires of liberty among enough people to someday make a difference -- perhaps in the same way Thomas Paine's Common Sense pamphlet once roused the colonies to action against the British Empire.

Though in all honesty, I think it's too late. Even Dr. Paul says the nation has already veered off the fiscal cliff and that there just aren't enough people who can rise to power to help right the ship in time, especially with so many people wanting so much from the government. And when you consider that 118 million Americans voted for either Obama or Romney, it's clear that the vast majority of voting Americans continue to be led around by the nose, gobbling up the lies and propaganda that the major parties and the media shovel out -- even to the point of voting against their own interests, as seen in California, where a spending blitz by chemical companies and Big Agribusiness actually convinced voters that they shouldn't demand to know whether their food is genetically modified.

Of course, if Obama had stuck to his 2007 campaign pledge to fight for GMO labeling, this wouldn't be an issue -- but you can't appoint Monsanto hacks to positions of power and expect them to get with the program. They're the ones who killed the California proposal, after all. And so America remains the only industrialized nation that doesn't mandate GMO labeling, which is an indication of just how much corporate interests control everything in this country. Corporations got a health-care plan that enriches them by mandating that all Americans buy private insurance, while health costs continue to spiral out of control. And now the corporations have defeated your right to know what's in your food -- courtesy of the voters themselves.

This nation is overrun with mindless, obedient sheep, and the politicians and their corporate puppetmasters take full advantage of it, granting themselves more and more wealth and power at our expense.

The fight for liberty may at this point be futile, but it is still a noble fight, and thank goodness we still have people brave enough to speak the truth. You will be missed, Dr. Paul. Thank you for all you've done in defense of liberty.

I've got your disposition matrix right here

To what should be no one's surprise, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama debated nothing of importance and agreed that drone-bombing women and children is A-OK. While the media focused on irrelevant nonsense like Big Bird, binders, and bayonets, our economy is careening toward a fiscal cliff, our civil liberties are dying, and we're creating more terrorists by the day with our incessant drone attacks on weddings, funerals, and those who rush to the aid of others who have already been bombed.

With Romney already having said he supported indefinite detention of American citizens without charge or trial under the NDAA bill Obama signed into law, we already knew we were screwed no matter who wins the election. Now that we know he digs drones and would escalate military spending, we can be assured that neither our foreign policy nor our spending crisis will be fixed under Romney. Truly, it does not matter who wins this election. On the issues that actually matter, the issues that will determine the future of this nation and the principles it was built on, Romney and Obama are in full agreement -- much to the dismay of lovers of peace, liberty, and fiscal responsibility everywhere.

These are not petty concerns. Not only are drones expanding their reach into U.S. airspace to spy on American citizens, but a nine-month study conducted by New York University and Stanford speaks to the unimaginable terror American drone attacks have unleashed in Pakistan. It notes the high numbers of civilian deaths, including children, and how double-tap strikes -- in which drones return to bomb sites to target any potential rescuers -- have made people reluctant to come to the aid of others. And it should go without saying, but the report also concludes that the relentless attacks are turning more and more people against the United States. It's as if we learned nothing from 9/11 and blowback.

And now it gets even worse. According to a blistering article from Glenn Greenwald -- a hero of investigative journalism if there ever was one -- the Obama administration is putting plans in place to make the War on Terror essentially a permanent fixture, complete with more kill lists and an enormous surveillance program aimed not just at the alleged bad guys, but at all of us. As Greenwald says:

What has been created here -- permanently institutionalized -- is a highly secretive executive branch agency that simultaneously engages in two functions: (1) it collects and analyzes massive amounts of surveillance data about all Americans without any judicial review let alone search warrants, and (2) creates and implements a "matrix" that determines the "disposition" of suspects, up to and including execution, without a whiff of due process or oversight. It is simultaneously a surveillance state and a secretive, unaccountable judicial body that analyzes who you are and then decrees what should be done with you, how you should be "disposed" of, beyond the reach of any minimal accountability or transparency.

The situation has already become so absurd, Greenwald notes, that where the Clinton administration once deliberated long and hard about its missile attack on what it believed to be Osama bin Laden's location, now the Obama administration barely bats an eye about killing people on a daily basis. This is a strategy obviously doomed to failure. As one government official notes in regard to this new plan, you can never kill everyone who wants to do you harm. Yet as the NYU/Stanford report observes, we're creating even more terrorists with every new bomb we drop. It's insanity. As Greenwald put it:

"[T]he US does not interfere in the Muslim world and maintain an endless war on terror because of the terrorist threat. It has a terrorist threat because of its interference in the Muslim world and its endless war on terror."

More from Greenwald:

[C]continuous killing does not eliminate violence aimed at the US but rather guarantees its permanent expansion. … Of course, the more the US kills and kills and kills, the more people there are who "want to harm us". That's the logic that has resulted in a permanent war on terror.

But even more significant is the truly radical vision of government in which this is all grounded. The core guarantee of western justice since the Magna Carta was codified in the US by the fifth amendment to the constitution: "No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." You simply cannot have a free society, a worthwhile political system, without that guarantee, that constraint on the ultimate abusive state power, being honored.

And yet … what we have had for years is a system of government that -- without hyperbole -- is the very antithesis of that liberty. It is literally impossible to imagine a more violent repudiation of the basic blueprint of the republic than the development of a secretive, totally unaccountable executive branch agency that simultaneously collects information about all citizens and then applies a "disposition matrix" to determine what punishment should be meted out. This is classic political dystopia brought to reality.

As for being able to detain people indefinitely without charge:

That people are now dying at Guantanamo after almost a decade in a cage with no charges highlights just how repressive that power is. Extend that mentality to secret, due-process-free assassinations -- something the US government clearly intends to convert into a permanent fixture of American political life -- and it is not difficult to see just how truly extremist and anti-democratic "war on terror" proponents in both political parties have become.

Anyone who's paying attention knows how true that statement is. The Democrats and Republicans are in bed together on this issue. They, and their accomplices in the mainstream press, want to keep Americans distracted with petty partisan bickering over irrelevant topics while the real damage to our nation goes virtually unchecked.

That's why it was such a blast of fresh air to get a third-party presidential debate this election cycle. With Larry King as moderator, four candidates -- Jill Stein of the Green Party, Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party, Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party, and Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party -- candidly addressed topics that Romney and Obama never would have touched, at the behest of their corporate masters. These are candidates who aren't bought and paid for and so can speak from the heart about matters the major parties and the press won't touch -- like NDAA. Although they differed on other issues, all four decried the assault on our Constitutional liberties from the likes of NDAA and the Patriot Act.

Gary Johnson, who called Ron Paul his hero, had the best line of the night in his closing statement:

Wasting your vote is voting for somebody that you don't believe in. That's wasting your vote. I'm asking everybody here, I'm asking everybody watching this nationwide to waste your vote on me. Vote for me, Gary Johnson, and you know what happens? I'm the next president of the United States, and I guarantee you, nobody will regret that. You'll find somebody with no quit; you'll find somebody who will wake up every single day and take on the debates and the discussions that need to be happening in this country and aren't happening today because of a lack of leadership.

In every election cycle in my voting lifetime, I've heard some variation on this argument: "This election is too important to throw your vote away on a third-party candidate. They have no chance of winning. Besides, a vote for that candidate is a vote for the guy I don't like."

Well, you know what? I'm going to get the chance to vote for president only a handful of times in my life, and I'm not about to vote for someone whose principles I disagree with, just so I can block some other candidate from claiming office. I don't vote for parties. I don't vote for the lesser of two evils. I vote for people and ideas. I vote for peace and liberty, and whoever espouses those views the best earns my vote. If Stalin and Hitler were the front-runners in a race for office, would you hold your nose and vote for one of them just because one of them was going to win anyway? Or would you give your vote to an outlier whose views you actually admired, even if you knew he wasn't going to win?

Naturally, the "can't win" argument is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course third parties can't win, if you don't vote for them. If everyone who ever said "they can't win" would actually vote third party, they just might win.

Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Voting the Democrats out and expecting the Republicans to fix everything, and vice versa, has been shown time and again not to work. So why do people keep doing it?

Vote your conscience for a change.

"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost." -- John Quincy Adams

Concert Review: Yes at Snoqualmie Casino, Aug. 12, 2012

Roundabout sign near the entrance to Snoqualmie Casino. How fitting for this night!

If I had to choose a Facebook relationship status with Yes, it would most certainly be "It's Complicated." This has been my favorite band for nearly 30 years, and they were my gateway drug into progressive rock. Their songs awakened me to what was musically possible to do in a rock-and-roll context. Chris Squire made me fall in love with the bass guitar, Bill Bruford awed me when I was a young drummer, and Jon Anderson's mongrel spirituality opened my mind to possibilities beyond the religion I was raised in. They were a huge part of my life when I was growing up, and they had a hand in shaping the person I am today.

But then the band moved on without Anderson several years ago. Yes had been inactive for quite a while, in part because Anderson had a different vision for what he wanted to do with the band than the other members. When he fell gravely ill, the band took the opportunity to hire a singer from a Yes tribute act and got Yes back on the road. Crass? You betcha. But Yes has always been notorious for ruthless personnel changes, with the belief that the music came above all else, and if one guy wasn't pulling his weight, they'd just go off and audition someone else.

So Yes went out on the road and eventually cut an album with Benoit David, a French Canadian guy who actually even looked a little like Jon Anderson. But covering Jon Anderson's vocal parts is no easy task, and it was obvious after a while that Benoit had to sing right at the outer edge of his range to mimic Anderson's soaring countertenor parts. At times he was a vocal dead ringer for Jon, but he paid the price for it. As the touring ground on and on, the embarrassing YouTube clips came rolling in with evidence of how Benoit's voice was cracking from the strain.

The band's solution? During a lull between tours, Yes went out and hired another tribute-band singer -- and Benoit says he first heard about the change on the Internet, not from anyone in the band. Classy. Anyway, the new guy is named Jon Davison, and from what I'd seen online, he slipped into the Jon Anderson role with ease.

So when Yes came around again, I decided to go and give them another try. After all, Chris Squire is still one of my favorite living musicians, probably only behind David Gilmour. And I wanted to give this Davison guy a fair shake, especially after what he had to say about one of Yes' most regal pieces of music, "Awaken," on the website for Glass Hammer, another prog band he sings with. So sayeth Mr. Davison:

I recall being a teenager and gazing out my bedroom window at the long stretch of canyon below our house and toward the sunset over the ocean while listening to "Awaken" by Yes. I would daily listen to that majestic and inspired epic several times in a row, longing for a spiritual connection of some kind. When a song like that can move and uplift you to a transcendental state, you know you've witnessed one of life's artistic gems.  

(Source: http://glasshammer.com/pages/features/JonDavison.html)

Jon D. seems like an interesting guy. He was childhood best friends with the Foo Fighters' Taylor Hawkins, and he eventually moved up here to study at the Art Institute of Seattle, before he ended up playing bass with a local band called Sky Cries Mary. (Current drummer Alan White has ties to Seattle, too -- he lives here, somewhere out around Bellevue.) Not long before he got the Yes gig, he tried out as the bass player for the Queen Extravaganza show. He's also singing with Glass Hammer (apropos of nothing, wouldn't a glass hammer be about the most useless tool you could ever own?). And I also happen to be Facebook friends with a guy who was in Roundabout, the Yes tribute band, with him. So hey, cool! I know someone who knows the guy who sings in Yes.

So anyway, the show starts, and Jon Davison seems perfectly relaxed as the singer of Yes. He's not straining to hit the notes, and his love for the music shines through. But the funny thing is, he really doesn't sound like Jon Anderson at all. He can sing in the same range, but his voice has a lighter touch than Anderson's did. Which is not a bad thing, really. Unlike Benoit David before him, he doesn't seem to be trying to mimic Anderson. He's letting himself be his own person onstage, giving the songs what they need from a technical standpoint but also adding his own little vocal flourishes here and there. I like that. Jon Anderson has recovered from his illness, but I've since seen him at a solo show in Seattle, and his voice is raspy enough that I'm not sure it would hold up to the rigors of a full-blown, amplified rock tour -- so if we can't have Anderson back, Jon Davison is the next best thing. No complaints on that front at all.

Chris Squire is still Chris Frickin' Squire, making his bass chug and growl and clang along at full speed, the way he always does. He's as much a rhythm guitarist as he is a bass player, and his sound has always been so integral to the Yes atmosphere, I just can't imagine it without his presence. He's still a superb backing vocalist as well, and he's the consummate showman, hamming it up with glee whenever his bass takes center stage in the music. I've been to probably a dozen Yes concerts over the years, and I never tire of seeing him strut and prowl around the stage when his bass groove kicks in during the long intro to "Heart of the Sunrise." Seeing him at the top of his game even in his mid-60s was worth the price of admission alone.

Alan White is too nice of a guy not to like. He's no Bill Bruford, but then no one is. He remains a solid, reliable timekeeper who knows how to rock out on the drums.

Now you know how I said my relationship with this band is complicated? That's where Geoff Downes and Steve Howe come in. Downes, half of the Buggles ("Video Killed the Radio Star") back in the day, and a founding member of Asia with Steve Howe, came onboard with Yes for the recording of their latest album, Fly From Here, after the band unceremoniously dumped keyboardist Oliver Wakeman, son of Yes legend Rick Wakeman. Downes had performed with Buggle-mate (and now famous producer) Trevor Horn on Yes' 1980 album Drama, so he had some history with the band. But when Yes hit the road with Downes and Benoit David, and fans took to cyberspace to complain both that Jon Anderson had been shafted and that the band sounded under-rehearsed for their first shows, Downes publicly tore into anyone critical of the band. And it wasn't even constructive feedback -- his comments were juvenile, retaliatory, and personal. The guy did a serviceable job on the keyboard parts he had to cover at the Snoqualmie show, but I still think he's a big jerk. I'm sure artists get tired of sniping, nit-picking fans, but you don't bite the hand that feeds you. You act like a professional and take the high road. And if someone says your playing isn't up to par, maybe you take that into consideration instead of lashing out at the critics.

Finally, Steve Howe. I admit, I've always liked Yes in spite of Steve Howe, not because of him. He's always come off as a self-righteous, joyless, pompous ass, and on this night he was in typical form, as he stepped to his mic to moan in the middle of the show about the venue's "toy PA" system. The thing is, I could probably overlook his unpleasantness if he could pull his weight in the band. For years, fans have complained that the tempos in live performances have been dragging, and at the Snoqualmie show, it was painfully obvious who the culprit was. Steve seemed to strain to hit every note that he squeezed out of his guitar, and he was audibly falling behind the rest of the band as he tried to pick his way through his leads. I realize the dude is 65 years old (though he doesn't look a day over 80 -- he seriously has to be the ugliest man in rock music), but if anyone else couldn't hack it musically in Yes, their days have always been numbered. Yet I don't see anyone trying to push this guy, the unholy love child of Skeletor and Gollum, out the door. I discovered Yes when Trevor Rabin was the guitarist, and I still miss him, even though I know he has zero interest in ever returning to Yes. He's making too much scratch writing and performing movie soundtracks. Too bad, because he can play rings around Steve Howe.

Amazingly, the band didn't play "Owner of a Lonely Heart," which is only their sole No. 1 song in their entire history. But perhaps it was for the best, since Steve always butchers the solo in that song anyway.

So my interest in Yes was piqued, but I can't see myself attending any more shows. Jon Davison is living a dream, and I wish him well. Chris Squire is still the god of the bass guitar, and Alan White is just good old Alan White. Good luck to them all, but I'm spending my money elsewhere next time.

Side note: Procol Harum was the opening act, and they sounded pretty sharp. I think Gary Brooker is the only remaining original member, as most of the rest of the band didn't look old enough to have been born when PH started off in the late '60s. Brooker said he had a cold, but you'd never have known it. His voice has aged beautifully. I only know four PH songs, and the band played two of them -- "A Salty Dog" and "Whiter Shade of Pale." No "Conquistador." Brooker teased us all with the opening line from the PH epic "In Held 'Twas In I," but then he said, "No, we can't play that one. It's 20 bloody minutes long!" And this is a problem how?! Anyway, quite an enjoyable hour of music.

Concert Review: Roger Hodgson at Snoqualmie Casino, Aug. 9, 2012

"I've been to over 90 concerts, and this is the best one I've ever seen!"

So said a guy standing behind me as the VIP section crowded toward the stage for the encore of Roger Hodgson's show. For all I know, it could have been the beer talking and he's one of those guys who loves everything and everyone when he gets tipsy -- but as a veteran of a hundred or so shows myself, I'd say this one ranks in my own top 10.

It was a gorgeous night for an outdoor concert, right around 70 degrees when the show started. Roger kicked things off with the Supertramp hit "Take the Long Way Home," and then he set the mood for the evening by taking a few minutes to say hello to the capacity crowd. The first thing I noticed was how much he smiled, and the next thing that struck me was how humble and gracious he seemed. This is a guy who sold 60 million albums with Supertramp, but he was completely down to earth. He talked about how grateful he is that he's gotten a "second lease on life" with his music and that it still meant so much to so many people after all these years.

See, the thing about Roger is that he left Supertramp in the early '80s, at the height of their fame, because he had small children growing up at home who didn't even know him -- so he walked away from his career to become a family man (now that speaks right to my heart). He built a home recording studio and put out three solo albums in that time -- but he soon realized that he didn't have much name recognition outside Supertramp, which had continued on without him. Around the turn of the century, with his kids grown, he took to the road again and began building a name for himself all over again. Now he's finally receiving critical acclaim for his music as Roger Hodgson, rather than as "that guy from Supertramp," and it's well overdue.

And the songs have endured. Roger says he still loves singing them because to him they're like snapshots in time of his own growth as a person. Anyone who knows Roger's songs knows that he writes introspective lyrics about what it means to love, to seek the truth, to be human. One of his best-known pieces, "The Logical Song," was all about losing the innocence and wonder of youth as we grow up and get stuffed full of facts and rules and opinions. We learn how to act outwardly toward society, but we lose touch with who we are inwardly. "Please tell me who I am," goes the song's most poignant line.

Before moving on, he asked us all to forget our cares for the next two hours and enjoy the music -- and he said he hoped he'd sing a few songs that would touch everyone in the audience and possibly bring back some good memories. "Nothing speaks to our memories like music," he said, and I've found that to be true in my own life. That's why music is by far my favorite artistic medium.

Later, before launching into his beautiful acoustic piece "Even in the Quietest Moments," Roger the Englishman mentioned how he was blown away by the natural beauty of America the first time he came here -- and no place more than the Pacific Northwest. "Do most of you live here?" he asked. "Lucky you," he said in reply to our cheers. He said he wrote "Quietest Moments" when he was out communing with the beauty of nature all around him, and even in the still quiet of the forest he was in, he could feel a nearly palpable energy that reminded him of our connection with something bigger than all of us -- whether you call it nature, God, the universe, or whatever. But in deference to the nice weather, he said he'd save his Supertramp song "It's Raining Again" to the end of the show. "It normally rains a lot here, doesn't it?" he asked, getting lots of knowing chuckles in reply. "Well, I wrote that song before I ever came to Seattle, but if I'd come to Seattle first, maybe I would have written it about your city."

This was the setlist:

Take the Long Way Home
School
In Jeopardy (from his first solo album, In the Eye of the Storm)
Lovers in the Wind (also from Storm)
Hide in Your Shell
Easy Does It
Sister Moonshine
Breakfast in America ("Everybody loved that song but my girlfriend at the time," Roger said.)
Lady
C'est le Bon
A Soapbox Opera
The Logical Song
Death and a Zoo (from his excellent third solo album, Open the Door)
If Everyone Was Listening
Child of Vision
Even in the Quietest Moments
Don't Leave Me Now
Fool's Overture
Dreamer

Encore:

Two of Us
Give a Little Bit
It's Raining Again

The songs that got the biggest reactions were the ones you'd expect: "Give a Little Bit," "The Logical Song," "Dreamer," "Breakfast in America," "Take the Long Way Home," "It's Raining Again." But the most beautiful part of the show for me was when Roger's band left the stage and he sang "Even in the Quietest Moments" all by himself, with just his 12-string guitar. Stripped to its delicate core, the song revealed the fullness of its reverence for the quiet power of nature. You could hear the emotional sincerity in Roger's voice.

And the single biggest treat for me was to see "Fool's Overture," Roger's epic piece that laments the folly of humanity. Roger still captures the soaring, wistful mood of the piece as his high tenor hits the stratosphere, making for a piece that sounds like something Yes could have pulled off back in the '70s. (Little wonder that Roger was asked to replace Jon Anderson when the latter left Yes in the late '80s.) It was a total goosebump moment seeing this one performed live.

The only thing I would have liked was to hear more from Open the Door, which in my book stands right alongside any of his Supertramp work. The swooping majesty of the album's opening cut, "Along Came Mary," played over the PA as Roger and his band left the stage after the encore, but along with Roger's performance of "Death and a Zoo," that's all we got.

But, of course, Roger knew most of the crowd was there to hear Supertramp. And on that, he delivered and then some. He and his band put on an impeccable performance, and his enthusiasm for his music was highly contagious, as we were all smiling and dancing and singing along. Those two hours flew by.

And it never did rain.

Roger says hello.

"Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned / I know it sounds absurd / Please tell me who I am."

"Give a little bit of your love to me ..."

If you love liberty, you might be a terrorist

With another July 4 holiday come and gone, it's worthwhile to reflect on the fact that in today's America, the Founding Fathers would be viewed as terrorists. According to Fatherland Security, one way you can spot a dangerous right-wing terrorist is to notice whether a person is "suspicious of centralized federal authority" or "reverent of individual liberty." I kid you not.

In case these fools have forgotten, we have a Constitution that was written to protect the American people from the overreaching tendencies of centralized government and to secure their individual liberties. Those values are the bedrock our nation was founded on.

The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.-- Terrorist John Adams

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere. -- Terrorist Thomas Jefferson

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one. -- Terrorist Thomas Paine

Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests. -- Terrorist George Washington

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. -- Terrorist James Madison

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Terrorist Benjamin Franklin

Give me liberty or give me death. -- Terrorist Patrick Henry

They'd all be in Guantanamo today.

Yeah, you remember Gitmo, right? The terror dungeon that Barky pledged to close but instead is now getting a $40 million upgrade, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. Obviously, we need a place where we can keep pumping detainees full of mind-altering drugs -- the same kind the Soviets used to use, no less -- in an attempt to extract information in between waterboardings.

We hear about more and more horrendous stories like this, and as always, the general public doesn't seem to care. Just a sampling of some of the outrageous stories to come down the pike in the past few weeks alone:

• The Pentagon is thinking about giving medals to the cowards who safely operate drones from miles away as they use their remote-control buttons to drop bombs on women and children.
• In another sweeping executive order, Barky decided to give himself complete control over American communication systems in the event of an emergency.
• Fatherland Security is set to employ new laser scanners that will be able to determine virtually anything about you at a molecular level from 50 meters away.
• Cell-phone carriers have reported that the feds asked for private information on their customers, including private communications, 1.3 million times last year -- further evidence that the NSA is conducting an ongoing and massive surveillance sting on the American people.
• A journalist and administration whistleblower claims to have seen a drone spying on him.
• CNN dutifully runs a graphic showing zero civilian deaths this year from drones in Pakistan -- without bothering to explain that the administration has changed its definition of combatants to include any adult male.

You don't hear about any of this in the mainstream press. CNN hasn't even run a retraction of it's Obama-cheerleading graphic. 

Why? Because the mainstream outlets bow to the military-industrial complex (especially when one of their own beloved Democrats is in office) and are owned by corporate interests who want to keep Americans stupid. Tell people what's really going on in the world around them and they might start asking questions. How else to explain these news-magazine covers from back in 2006 and 2007?

While Time and Newsweek ran cover stories for the rest of the world on the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, American readers were treated to a debate on teaching the Bible in school, and a fluff piece on photographer Annie Leibovitz. We mustn't disturb the narrative about how we're fighting to defend American freedom and winning the war on terror. Oh, goodness, no.

It's this same lack of a prominent independent media voice that doesn't let you hear about things like the Obama administration's assassination of an American teenager, or how Osama bin Laden may have been dead for years before Barky claimed credit for his death, or why there are people wondering how the United States gets to be above reproach for its actions while it terrorizes the rest of the world. Even when they're handed a hot story on a silver platter, sometimes the press just doesn't show any interest.

The Obama birth-certificate flap came around again, and after Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced that two computer experts each ran more than 600 tests and found falsifications on the officially released document, the press decided to shoot the messenger. Being faced with documentation that, if truly forged, could mean Obama is not constitutionally eligible to be president, the gathered press ignored the evidence and hurled challenges and insults at Arpaio instead. 

Obama's own literary agent wrote the following biographical blurb back in 1991.

Mainstream-media interest: zero.

Your U.S. media, guardians of the truth, following wherever the facts lead. Or not. 

Arpaio was said to be upset to find out that not even Congress was willing to act on its constitutional duties in examining the evidence on Barky. But this is a Congress that overwhelmingly voted for indefinite detention of American citizens without trial, so it's not a huge surprise that this bunch would shirk its duties in defense of the rule of law. 

It's heartening that at least one brave American hero among the Congressional ranks, Dennis Kucinich, is willing to hold Obama's feet to the fire. Proving that not all liberals are spineless sellouts, Kucinich was instrumental in drafting the letter from 26 members of Congress that challenged Obama to explain his hideous foreign policy. Kucinich elaborated at length in an interview:

We have ventured into a world since 9/11 where international law is set aside and where the implements of war are becoming so ubiquitous that all the rules are being ignored and conflict zones are expanding. Where suspected terrorists – and we do not know what they are really suspected of doing, you know – they can be suspects now, and they can be executed. Or they can just be perceived to be a male of combat age and be executed. 

[ ... ] 

You are looking here at an executive power that is unleashed. Our system of justice, according to the Constitution, is highly structured. There are broad areas of our Constitution that have to do with people being investigated, arrested, charged, having a trial, and then if they are convicted being properly sentenced and incarcerated. 

[ ... ]  

What we have done here with the drone programme is to radically alter our system of justice. Because, remember, if the whole idea is that we are exporting American values, those drones represent American values. And now we are telling the world that American values are summary executions, no rights to an accused, no arrest process, no reading of charges, no trial by jury, no judge, only an executioner. If you have only an executioner that is not justice, that is something else.

[ ... ] 

[W]hen you have assassination programmes that lack any attempt to establish legal justification, then you have journeyed into moral depravity. International law means nothing, laws of war mean nothing.  

[ ... ]  

[S]omeday, I hope it is not going to be too far into the future, somebody is going to look back at this and go "oh my God, why was this permitted?" ... We cannot assume for ourselves the right to impose a war anywhere we well please, and yet we have. 

[ ... ] 

I look at it from my standpoint, as an American, as a member of Congress, what would we do if China, or Russia, or Iran sent a drone over the US? How would we respond? We would see it as, we would see the presence of a drone over our air-space as an act of war, no question about it. And a firing of a drone would invite a full retaliatory response. There is just no question about it, anyone who knows the US know how we would respond to that. Why then does our administration believe that America has some kind of a peremptory position? Why are we immune from international law? Where did we get that special privilege? 

[ ... ]  

[T]he UN Charter was established to protect the sovereignty of every nation and to stop the scourge of war. The United States, as a participant in the UN, has a responsibility not to aggress. Every nation has a right to defend itself, but no nation has the right to aggress against another. We are clearly aggressing against Pakistan, and against Yemen, and against a whole range of countries. This can only lead to more war. With war, these wars, any drone now is an incendiary that spreads war more broadly and it incites more people to join the cause of those who protest the US policies and who seeks to commit violence. 

[ ... ] 

How did the nation, that was founded under such egalitarian principles, find itself running a killing bureaucracy, how did that happen? How did we make that journey? This is clearly a story of a nation that is losing its way in the world to a mixture of fear and hubris.  

[ ... ]  

Killings become too easy, without a justice system to guide it. It is vigilantism conducted by robots. This is a venture into a realm that would have perhaps been conjured by the likes of Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe, but certainly not by Washington or Jefferson. 

[ ... ]  

The only time civilian casualties are used is to articulate a cause for further US involvement in a conflict such as in Syria. There's talk about civilian casualties there, it's a very regretful situation in Syria. And the US will almost daily report on those civilian casualties because there's a cry for intervention. But where there's no interest in intervention, where there’s a desire simply to dominate either militarily, politically, strategically, then you'll see the whole issue of civilian casualties buried. 

Why do they do that? I think the people of the United States would be horrified if they actually understood how many innocent people are being swept up in the maw of these wars. So people are just permitted to sleep. And it's going to be very disturbing for the American people when they awake from the slumber to look out upon a world where there's carnage everywhere that's created by our nation without any legal process, without any constitutional basis and without any articulated justification.

Wouldn't it be great to hear this kind of candid talk about the direction of our country in the presidential debates? To his credit, Ron Paul tried, but he was either cut short or ignored at every turn. It's the radical independent thinkers from each major party that still unabashedly speak truth to power. And that's exactly why the press ignores them.

The media has taken its marching orders well.

Napoleobama

On one hand, the Supreme Court got it right on the Obamacare mandate today: Congress cannot use the Commerce Clause to force people to engage in private commerce. Where they got it wrong was in reinterpreting the law to essentially call the mandate a tax. Since the IRS would collect a fine for not complying with the mandate, Chief Justice Roberts said the penalty is a tax, and therefore, the mandate falls under Congress' constitutional authority to assess and collect taxes.

The problem is that the law as written never characterized the penalty as a tax. Obama himself railed against the notion that the mandate amounted to a tax:

Of course, Obama also campaigned against a health-care mandate in the first place, but then he's made it clear that his hypocrisy knows no bounds.

The Court's dissenting opinion calls out the majority for essentially creating new law out of thin air:

[T]o say that the Individual Mandate merely imposed a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it. Judicial tax-writing is particularly troubling.

[...] 

The values that should have determined our course today are caution, minimalism, and the understanding that the Federal Government is one of limited powers. But the Court's ruling undermines those values at every turn.

[...] 

The fragmentation of power produced by the structure of our Government is central to liberty, and when we destroy it, we place liberty at peril. Today's decision should have vindicated, should have taught, this truth; instead, our judgment today has disregarded it.

In short: judicial activism at its worst.

The obvious slippery slope the court has created here is that Congress can now compel the people to engage in any type of activity they want, so long as there's a "tax" imposed for noncompliance.

Willard Mittens Romney claims that if he's elected, he'll repeal the whole Obamacare debacle -- but keep in mind this is the guy who launched Romneycare back in Massachusetts.

If Rand Paul can hold his nose and back the guy, would others do the same just to get this ridiculous mandate off our backs? Keep in mind that the guy has about as much disdain for the Constitution as Obama does, considering that he endorsed the NDAA bill allowing indefinite detention of American citizens, and that he doesn't think the president needs a Congressional declaration to go to war. And his party is still doing everything it can to disenfranchise Ron Paul supporters -- the most recent example being in Romney's own back yard. If nothing else, maybe Rand's endorsement of Mitt will get him a VP nomination, and that would put Rand in a really good spot to make his own run for the Oval Office -- and as far as I'm concerned, Rand is still a friend of liberty.

Not that things could get much worse under Obama. Not only does his health-care travesty survive, but in a brazen act of election-year pandering, he also just decides to override Congress and grant amnesty to thousands of illegal immigrants. You wonder if there's anything he won't do to push through his agenda. As the Christian Science Monitor reports:

Jonathan Turley, who usually sides with progressive ideals, tells Politico: "This is a President who is now functioning as a super legislator" who is "effectively negating parts of the criminal code because he disagrees with them. That does go beyond the pale."

And:

"This isn't about immigration but about constitutional order," says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative-leaning think tank. "One problem is that even Democrats in Congress now have no right to complain about future usurpations -- they might as well all go home and have Napoleon run the country."

Makes you wonder what would have happened had the Supreme Court ruled his health plan unconstitutional. Would he have just decreed that he was going to enforce it anyway?

This is the kind of thing that tyrants and dictators do. Not democratically elected leaders of free, law-abiding nations.

Of course, Candidate Obama said his administration would never act like this:

Salient quote:

The issue of executive power and executive privilege is one that is subject to abuse, and in an Obama presidency, what you will see will be a sufficient respect for law and the co-equal branches of government  .

Ha! Oh, if only.

As for executive privilege, he blasted Shrubby for invoking it so much:

Salient quote:

There's been a tendency on the part of this administration to try to hide behind executive privilege every time there's something a little shaky that's taking place.

Fast-forward to today, and we have Barky invoking executive privilege to shield his attorney general from having to turn over subpoenaed documents to Congress. Operation Fast and Furious funneled guns into Mexico in an attempt to track them to drug cartels, and the program blew up in the administration's face when two of those guns were found at the scene of the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. To their credit,  members of the House found the attorney general in contempt of Congress.

So much for "the most transparent administration in history." Lies upon lies upon lies.

You know things are bad when a TSA groper brings one woman to tears, another laughs when she spills the human remains of a man's grandfather after poking her finger through the ashes, and the agency has the audacity to charge a passenger with battery for giving an agent a taste of her own medicine -- and it's not the most outrageous news of the week.

And for Obama, you know it's really bad when not just a fellow president, but one from his own party, criticizes America's abusive and reckless foreign policy:

Former president Jimmy Carter has blasted the United States for anti-terror strategies such as targeting individuals for assassination and using unmanned drones to bomb suspected targets, saying they directly flout the basic tenets of universal human rights and foment anti-US sentiment. 

In an article written for the New York Times headlined "A Cruel and Unusual Record", Mr Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work trying to resolve conflicts around the globe, suggested that the US is in violation of 10 of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

[...]

"Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation's violation of human rights has extended," Mr Carter wrote, concluding that the US is "abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights".

How does this clown even have any supporters left anymore?

Don't drone me, bro

If you didn't see it splashed across the pages of The New York Times, the very definition of mainstream media, you might think it was a work of dystopian fiction, or the product of a paranoid conspiracy theorist. But no, there it was, on the pages of the Old Gray Lady herself:

Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret "nominations" process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be.

Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding "kill list," poring over terrorist suspects' biographies on what one official calls the macabre "baseball cards" of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises -- but his family is with him -- it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.

"He is determined that he will make these decisions about how far and wide these operations will go," said Thomas E. Donilon, his national security adviser.

[ ... ]

When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda -- even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was "an easy one."

[ ... ]

Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.

[ ... ]

Every week or so, more than 100 members of the government's sprawling national security apparatus gather, by secure video teleconference, to pore over terrorist suspects' biographies and recommend to the president who should be the next to die.

This secret "nominations" process is an invention of the Obama administration, a grim debating society that vets the PowerPoint slides bearing the names, aliases and life stories of suspected members of Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen or its allies in Somalia's Shabab militia.

[ ... ]

The nominations go to the White House, where by his own insistence ... Mr. Obama must approve any name. He signs off on every strike in Yemen and Somalia and also on the more complex and risky strikes in Pakistan -- about a third of the total.

In short: The president of the United States unilaterally decides who lives and dies from a "kill list," even if the target is an American citizen, and even if some civilians are murdered in the process -- since anyone in the vicinity of a terrorist was probably "up to no good" anyway.

This is beyond any semblance of checks and balances, or of observing international law. These are, to put it plainly, the actions of an out-of-control dictator.

What may be the most frightening thing is that this is an election year, and you just know the Obama administration fed this story to the Times, in hopes of making the president look tough on terror. It says a lot about just how arrogant and out of touch from reality this administration is that it was apparently never considered that this would paint Obama in the worst possible light, as an out-of-control tyrant who acts as the sole arbiter over the lives of other human beings on a regular basis.

The criticism of this insane policy pulls no punches. From The Nation:

The kill list makes a mockery of due process by circumventing judicial review, and turning the executive into judge, jury and executioner. Even worse, the “signature” strikes described in theTimesarticle, in which nameless individuals are assassinated based merely on patterns of behavior, dispense with any semblance of habeas corpus altogether.

[ ... ]

The drone strikes are inciting even more anti-American hatred in troubled places like Yemen as well as Pakistan. ... It is hard to argue that they are making us safer when, for every suspect killed, one or more newly embittered militants emerge to take his place. This is not a prescription for American security but for an endless war that will sap our moral core and put in jeopardy our most cherished freedoms at home.

 From The Nation's Katrina Vanden Heuvel, writing in The Washington Post:

Our founders were eager to curb the prerogative of kings to wage war and foreign adventures. That is why the Constitution gave Congress the power to declare war. Yet the president now claims the right to attack anywhere in the world in an apparently endless war against terrorism.

And from AlterNet:

Obama owns his newspeak-drenched "kill list." He decides on a "personality strike" (a single suspect) or a "signature strike" (a group). "Nominations" are scrutinized by Obama and his associate producer, counter-terrorism czar John Brennan. The logic is straight from Kafka; anyone lurking around an alleged "terrorist" is a terrorist. The only way to know for sure is after he's dead. 

And the winner of the Humanitarian Oscar for Best Targeted Assassination with No Collateral Damage goes to … the Barack Obama White House death squad. 

Targeted -- and dissolved -- throughout this grim process are also a pile of outdated concepts such as national sovereignty, set-in-stone principles of U.S. and international law, and any category which until the collapse of the Soviet Union used to define what is war and what is peace. Anyway, those categories started to be dissolved for good already during the Bush administration -- which "legalized" widespread CIA and Special Ops torture sessions and death squads. 

Any self-respecting jurist would have to draw the inevitable conclusion; the United States of America is now outside international law -- as rogue a state as they come, with The Drone Empire enshrined as the ultimate expression of shadow war.

The AlterNet article really says it all. We are a rogue state, indiscriminately flying drones into the airspace of other sovereign nations, whether with their consent or not, and opening fire on alleged terrorist targets and anyone else who happens to be in the vicinity. If another nation were doing this, we would openly condemn it -- and we would be right to do so.

At least the U.N. commissioner for human rights is saying something. So are 26 members of Congress -- including Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, two upstanding, principled men from opposite ends of the political spectrum -- who sent a letter to Obama essentially challenging him to justify his actions.

Unfortunately, most of the outrage over the Times story hasn't been about how our president has turned America into a loose cannon that's become virtually indistinguishable from a banana republic. Oh, no. The criticism has been that the story was leaked in the first place, since the revelation could supposedly jeopardize national security, according to treasonous traitors like John McCain. As Vanden Heuvel points out:

Please. Al-Qaeda knows that U.S. drones are hunting them. The Pakistanis, Yemenis, Somalis, Afghanis and others know the U.S. is behind the drones that strike suddenly from above. The only people aided by these revelations are the American people who have an overriding right and need to know.

The problem isn't the leaks, it's the policy. It's the assertion of a presidential prerogative that the administration can target for death people it decides are terrorists -- even American citizens -- anywhere in the world, at any time, on secret evidence with no review.

Not that informing the American people about any of this is going to make a whit of difference, since the overwhelming majority of Americans -- 83% -- support our drone attacks overseas.

And that, in a nutshell, is why this country is screwed.

But hey, drones are doing more than killing suspected terrorists, anyone unlucky enough to be near them, and both rescuers who come to collect the bodies and the funerals where the dead are laid to rest. They're coming to the skies over you! Back in February, Obama signed a bill that authorizes the use of drones over American airspace. There could be as many as 30,000 flying over our heads by 2020, and the military is already flying them over our soil; in fact, one just recently crashed in Maryland. Virginia's governor thinks drones over American skies are "great," and the chief of police in Fairfax County, Va., is looking forward to their increased use. They're already being used to spy on American citizens, in a flagrant violation of any reading of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. If these eyes in the sky pick up anything deemed suspicious, the information can be turned over to the police and government agencies, in an obvious end-run around the need for a search warrant. And that's not even to mention the obvious violation of the Posse Comitatus Act prohibiting the use of the military to enforce domestic law.

In case this point is not clear enough, the United States military is now spying on its own citizens. The information that's gathered is being shared with government agencies and local police -- many of whom are eager to start arming drones, for "crowd control" and the like, of course. Because, of course, the police would never abuse that power.

If this isn't all 1984 enough for you, the British media reports that there are insect-sized drones already in the works that could fly around virtually unnoticed and go pretty much wherever they pleased.

To his eternal credit, Sen. Rand Paul has proposed a bill that would require a warrant before drones could go snooping around through your private affairs. This bill is just common sense, in keeping with our Constitutional rights to privacy and due process. And that's why it will probably be fought tooth-and-nail in Congress, where putting Constitutional restraints on the government is now seen as aiding terrorism.

Naturally, none of this drone activity will actually help us defeat terrorism. If anything, the indiscriminate drone strikes overseas are swelling the ranks of Al Qaeda even more, proving once again that we've learned nothing about blowback. Meanwhile, back on the homefront, we have cops who think they can suspend your First Amendment rights at will; a young man who gets three life sentences for witnessing a drug deal; a mayor who wants to ban big, sugary drinks because he's "simply forcing you to understand" the health consequences of your actions; and a 4-year-old girl terrorized by TSA perverts who order her to "spread her arms and legs" for a search or else cause the entire airport to be shut down over the supposed threat she posed.

Welcome to a nation that continues to delude itself into thinking it's free. A nation that seems to think it has a God-given right to blast the rest of the world to smithereens and force everyone to play by its rules. It seems somehow fitting that even among Obama's supporters, the list of his "accomplishments" is littered with people he's killed.

Pity that the Nobel committee doesn't rescind peace prizes. An even greater pity that all the antiwar protestors during the Bush years turn a blind eye to their hero's warmongering -- which in some cases is even worse than what Bush ever engaged in. But the biggest pity of all is that no one cares that our Constitution is effectively dead. The bad guys didn't even have to put up a fight -- the spineless, cowering masses willingly handed their freedoms over and sealed the deal.

Will the last patriot out please turn off the lights.